American Psycho

This contribution has not yet been formally edited by Britannica. Learn more.

Articles such as this one were acquired and published with the primary aim of expanding the information on Britannica.com with greater speed and efficiency than has traditionally been possible. Although these articles may currently differ in style from others on the site, they allow us to provide wider coverage of topics sought by our readers, through a diverse range of trusted voices. These articles have not yet undergone the rigorous in-house editing or fact-checking and styling process to which most Britannica articles are customarily subjected. In the meantime, more information about the article and the author can be found by clicking on the author’s name.

American Psycho, novel by Bret Easton Ellis, published in 1991. A successful movie version of the novel, starring Christian Bale in the lead role, appeared in 2000.

American Psycho is, above all, an ugly book. It is an extraordinarily graphic description of obscene violence, which is spliced with reviews of music by Phil Collins and Whitney Houston, and with endless, repetitive descriptions of 1980s main street fashion. The novel’s protagonist, Patrick Bateman, is a psychopath who also works on Wall Street. He conducts business meetings, goes to upmarket restaurants, and commits rape and murder. The novel registers no difference between these activities. Depravity, it suggests, is so finely woven into the fabric of contemporary life that it is no longer possible to see it or depict it, to know when capitalism stops and brutalization begins.

There is no attempt to take a moral stance on Bateman, or the culture to which he belongs. But the extremity of the violence, coupled with the uninflected way in which it is described, produces a strange, ethereal dimension to the writing, which is as close as the novel can come to an ethics, or to an aesthetic. As Bateman struggles to understand why he has been summoned to this particular damnation, he is unable to formulate to himself his own misery, or his own confusion. As a result, the novel produces a longing for ethical certainty, for some kind of clear perspective on a culture that has become unreadable, and unthinkable. This is a longing that speaks of a kind of innocence, even in the midst of depravity, and for this reason alone, American Psycho must continue to be read.